HANDS TIED OVER NORTH KOREA? HIT CHINA ECONOMICALLY

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT NORTH KOREA ?

ANSWER: A "PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN" AGAINST CHINESE. PRODUCTS!

FORGET SANCTIONS ON NORTH KOREA.  HIT CHINA WITH OUR BEST ECONOMIC WEAPON--AVOID BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS.

If every time we purchased a product we turned it over and determined its country of origin. If noting  it was from China and aware that the Chinese perisit in support of North Korea who threaten us by flying missiles over Japan and toward the western USA-- we must ask why should we aid them?  Buy something else. 

There has been a great deal of consternation about North Korea's missile tests and its rapid advancement in nuclear-bomb technology. That nation  has continued to thumb its nose expressed by the international community and from the USA.  It has continued with its plans and tests with abandon and impunity.   The so called "hermit kingdom" has made a mockery out of established international relations and norms.  It must be reined in. But how?

We know that the military options against that nation are not desirable, practicable or humane. Stringent sanctions imposed by the UN and the USA since  the early months of this year have had no effect.  In the fact the economy of North Korea has actually grown at an enviable rate of about 4% annually in 2016.  See: Bloomberg, "North Korea's Secret Weapon. Economic Growth" by David Volodzko September 14, 2017.

Bloomberg author Volodzko asks why rounds of more and ,more stringent sanctions imposed over the last decade failed to get NK to moderate its policies?  The reason, according to this author: the economy of NK is actually growing well (its GDP is now rated at about $28.5 billion) and altering its behavior will not work as long as that nation is prospering.  How can that be?  But the growing prosperity, brazen behavior and boldness of North Korea is directly related to  the Chinese.  That nation claims to support the rest of the world's concerns about NK---but quietly continue to supply the North with fuel, and raw materials and continue to buy their export products, providing them with the foreign exchange to purchase bomb and missile making materiel.    For example, although the Chinese agreed in February to ban NK coal imports, other NK  products (like iron) have surged in sales.  As a result, in the first half of this year exports to China have grown to $2.5 billion, making up for more than the decline in coal exports   It is this perfidious behavior of the Chinese which keeps the North's economy afloat.   The result  is that sanctions are not likely to have the effects that the Trump Administrations and the rest of the world would like to see.

So we face a determined enemy supported by one of our most priveleged trading partners.   In economic terms this is the situation. We buy Chinese vast quantities of goods and the Chinese use the vast sums from those transactions  to purchase North Korean coal and iron and sea food.   Money is fungible.  The funds from those transactions go into the coffers of the North Koreans.  In turn Kim Jung un and his underlings use that trade income to advance their nuclear and missile technology to threaten us.   So we are, in effect,  by our slavish purchasing of Chinese goods, helping to monetize a nuclear threat to our own nation!  That seems very stupid.

We can not solve the NK conundrum if the Chinese do not cooperate.  So  perhaps our best option is to put real pressure on the Chinese?  The message they understand best is an economic one.  Our trade is critical to their survival.

Mr. Trump, the Republicans, as well as the Democrats and every businessman in America may talk openly of "pressuring" the Chinese but that is all bluster and blather.  All our leaders  are adamantly against any economic sanctions or other punitive measure against  China.  It would cost them too dearly in income. But private citizens can act on their own intititivepowerfully in the market place.

If the Chinese will not put the screws to the North Koreans, the world's citizenry  need not aid them in their economic support of North Korea and its dangerous polices of nuclear blackmail.   .  Perhaps we as ordinary citizens should make our displeasure clear by beginning a citizen's disinvestment and /or citizen's sanction, boycott or ban of Chinese goods.  If every one of us rejected a sale of a Chinese manufactured product--the more expensive the better--the effects would be enormous and immediate.

In a very short time Mr Xi Jinping would be motivated to act to end his economic support of his wayward neighbor and end the terrible threat of a nuclear exchange.